[Note: Drew Cannon has been working on projecting freshman performance using a combination of stats and some subjective measures. You know Drew from his work at Basketball Prospectus and ESPN Insider. He’ll be posting occasionally throughout the summer, and maybe longer. Please note the bylines going forward. - Ken]

I’ve gone and made advanced stats projections for the ESPNU Top 100 freshmen for next season. All the info that went in is player-specific rather than team-specific, so Mo Watson’s numbers aren’t adjusted for the easier schedule he’ll face in the America East conference, Jordan Price’s numbers don’t reflect the larger load of the offense he’ll have to take since he’s at Auburn, and Josh Scott’s rebounding numbers aren’t affected by the fact that he’ll be fighting Andre Roberson on the glass.

Right now, these projections aren’t particularly complicated. I don’t try to figure out minutes, for example. And there aren’t too many inputs, either – it’s mostly very basic information you can find anywhere along with a couple secret sauce ingredients from running in recruiting circles for the past few years. The goal is to make them considerably better each year. The Nike Elite Youth Basketball League kept full statistics for last year’s league, and those will quadruple the effectiveness of these projections next year for about half the Top 100. This summer, I’m tracking a bunch of guys skill-by-skill, and those numbers will dramatically improve the projections for the statless half of the Class of 2014.

That said, they’re pretty good. Better than I expected, at least. They say Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel will probably block the most shots, and they say N.C. State’s Tyler Lewis will probably get the most assists. Plenty of recruiting guys would be on board with that, and most of these numbers at least look ballpark accurate. But there are also some issues. It’s tough for the current system to figure out shooting, for example – nobody’s currently projected above 74 percent on free throws.

The biggest issue is selection bias. Three or four of these guys will never make it to campus (the most likely of whom, Torian Graham, is not currently committed to a college). Ten or so more will redshirt, whether by injury or choice or eligibility issues. There’s a good chance #100 Savon Goodman will be theoretically knocked out of the Top 100 by a reclassified 2013, much like Andre Dawkins, Greg Echenique, Jarnell Stokes, Andre Drummond, or Sim Bhullar. (2013 PG Stevie Clark was briefly discussing the possibility before deciding to remain in his original class, and 2012 Maryland recruit Damonte Dodd would be ranked around #85 were the rankings not finalized.) And another eight or so will play so little that they won’t be listed on the Kenpom team pages.

That all means that the projections are cobbled together from only the best 80 seasons of 100. So everybody’s probably overrated, to some degree. Right now, these projections are mostly just standards to measure players against. Someone outperforming these numbers should be considered overperforming, even though largely everyone will underperform fans’ expectations.

Stats here are the standard advanced variety found on the team pages. B/S% is block and steal percentage. 3PA% is the percentage of field goal attempts taken from three-point range.